


Hedge Roses

by Silverfern500



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Amy and Rory make a cameo, F/F, Fluff, Rose is the mayor's daughter, Thirteen is a hedgewitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 08:49:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13337685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverfern500/pseuds/Silverfern500
Summary: If The Hedgwitch loved anything, it was talking aloud and tinkering. Oh, and bothering Rose.The Hedgewitch must love bothering Rose most of all.Rose felt a curl of what may have been jealousy at the implication of The Hedgewitch loving anything else at all.





	Hedge Roses

PRESENT:

“You!” the angry mob called, as they gathered about the witch’s cottage. Assembled outside her hedges, all in patchwork grey worker’s pants and grime-splotched shirts. There was a pitchfork or two, and one man stood slightly in front, holding a mallet. He glared as the front door of the cottage squeaked open, and a face peered out. Confused, moss-green eyes took in the scene. Wisps of blonde hair fell in front of her nose.

“We know you’re here, witch! You’ll answer to us for your crimes!”

The Hedgewitch opened the door more fully, straightened, and stepped out into the afternoon sunlight. Revealing her comfortable dress of a black blouse and dove-grey riding pants. A robin’s egg blue capelet hanging off her shoulders.

“Well then,” she murmured. “Let’s hear it then, shall we?”

\--

ONE HOUR EARLIER

Rose had been in the shop when the city’s unrest finally caught her attention. She had her head bowed over her work as usual, face covered by the brown hood of her cloak and ears tuned to the clocks around her.

“There’ll be a riot!” One man said outside as he passed. Rose heard him on the light breeze coming in through the open window. She thought his tone rather rude and pompous, and wasn’t pleased with other snippets of remarks she heard besides. She tried to focus harder on the intricate work she was doing, picking apart the inner mechanics of a mantel clock. Tongue between her teeth, a look of sheer determination and frustration pulling her eyebrows together. She couldn’t remember what was wrong with the blasted contraption to have it brought in, for she couldn’t fix it and had surely broken it more in attempting to figure it out. She may have even groaned “what do you want from me!” at it. Either way, she didn’t hear the bell above the door.

An older couple had come in, both dressed in finery. The woman in a nice red gown and the man in a full suit.

“They’ll drive that poor woman out of the province itself!” The man told his wife. No doubt the tail-end of an on-going conversation.

The woman scoffed. “Serves her right, seducing the Mayor’s daughter into refusing her arranged marriage like that. Rose and Mr. Smith made a beautiful couple before she went meddling.”

Rose fiddled with a small metal disk and it bounced out from her fingers, landing and rolling across her worktable. She scoffed at it. The couple looked at her, surprised out of their gossip. When they cleared their throats in a none-too-subtle way, Rose finally looked up. “Oh!” She cried. “‘m sorry, I must have missed the bell. Mr. Lake”

“It’s quite alright, ms. Wolfe, we’ve not been left long.” Mr. Lake replied cordially, looking down at his adoring wife as if to confirm with her. She stared up at him as if it were right for him to defer to her. “Amelia and I were just discussing The Hedgewitch.”

Rose’s ears perked up at that, as she stood and approached the counter from where she’d been working in the back. She took care to hide her face still, but made no effort to disguise the interest in her voice. “What about The Hedgewitch?”

But Amelia picked up the topic as if she hadn’t heard Rose at all. “Yes,” she agreed with her husband, turning towards the young shop girl. “What do you think? Should she be chased off, or do you think her love will swoop in to ‘save’ the day?”

Rose was confused. Save the day? What trouble had The Hedgewitch gotten herself into _now_? And _what_ love? As far as Rose knew, The Hedgewitch didn’t have any ‘love’, except for constantly messing with spells and what Rose considered the “feng shui” of her cottage.  
That woman was always rearranging the furniture, painting over spots on the wall that weren’t there, over-watering plants, fixing table and chair legs which weren’t uneven, fussing over herbs, pulling weeds and then pulling her hair out when they weren’t weeds but growing flowers... and Rose was pretty sure, The Hedgewitch even talked to them.  
You could find her going into the forest for nuts or berries or something and the wind would pick up just right and she’d mutter “yes, I think it will be an early winter” back to it. So if The Hedgwitch loved anything, it was talking aloud and tinkering. Oh, and bothering Rose.  
The Hedgewitch must love bothering Rose most of all.

Rose felt a curl of what may have been jealousy at the implication of The Hedgewitch loving anything else at all.

“I think,” Rose replied as dryly as she could, “I should return to my work before I lose the daylight. Mr. Lake?” She addressed the husband, and grabbed a pocketwatch from a velvet-lined case below the counter. “I believe this is your timepiece?”  
He took it, looking a little sheepish on his wife’s behalf. And with the practiced grace of the mayor’s wife herself, Rose ushered them out the door with a fake smile and an open gob.  
“It was lovely to see you two, I won’t hear of payment until you return for the Grandfather. Bugger’s got me out of my head, but I’ll fix it. No problem fixing clocks, me.” She ignored the twinge of hatred she felt for the broken mantel clock on her desk, as she opened the door and saw the Lakes out. “Have a lovely day now, ta!” And as soon as it was shut she had sighed, pressing her back against the door.

Within the next ten minutes she was out of her working uniform and into a more acceptable blue gown. She kept her work boots on, though. They were shoes she could run in. The Hedgewitch had taken one look at the fine ladies’ boots Rose had worn back in May, and sworn up and down that there was no use in wearing anything one couldn’t run in. Especially not to her cottage.

Rose hurried through back alleys to a more acceptable area of the city before stepping into the crowds. Causing a scene nonetheless as she called out to a nearby carriage and ordered she be taken to the bordering town right away.

From there she would run, and she wouldn’t stop until she’d caught up with the mob that had begun to march towards the cottage on the edge of the forest. She wouldn’t stop until she stood between them and The Hedgewitch.

\--

PRESENT

The leader of the group stared down the witch. The Hedgewitch couldn’t tell if she was amused or irritated. Whether to walk towards her guests with caution, or bravado. She settled on something somewhere in the middle on both accounts and when she approached, she could see the wariness in their eyes. She stopped a bit before the gate which separated them.

“It ain’t right,” the leader grumbled. “You show up and there’s no end to our troubles. Half the town’s gone mad! You get all happy and we’re over-run with rose bushes poppin’ out of the cobblestone. Get in a funk and it’s more rain for a week. The women ain’t putting up with the men and the men are sewing and washing. You gave the Briars’ boy a potion to cure his cough and it turned his hair blue! Blue!” The man was out of breath, what started as vexation turned to pure bemusement in his voice by the end.

The Hedgewitch had listened with a little embarrassment, and at the last she grinned, tilting her head. “But his cough went away,” she announced. She might have even sounded a little smug. Besides, she rather liked blue.

“You’re a witch!” One man cried from the back of the crowd.

“Yes?” The Hedgewitch responded, as if that were redundant. “Of course I am, it’s in my name! It’s not like I’ve made it a big secret. You all seem fine with that fact when it’s serving _you_.”

There was some muttered agreement in the crowd. Their leader pushed on.

“Well it’s not helping us now!” He huffed. “Whatever this crush you’ve got going on, it’s ruining our crops. Thought we wouldn’t figure it out, did you? Not natural to get a rainstorm at the end of June when the little miss of the mayor’s hall announces her engagement, and then they break it off and it’s sunshowers and _more bloody roses_.”

The Hedgewitch had the decency to blush a little and ducked her head. “Never liked Michael the idiot” she grumbled under her breath.

It was silent for a few beats after that, until one young woman piped up in a soft voice. She pulled her way through to the front of the crowd, and caught the witch’s eye. “They’re right, Hedgewitch.” She lowered her eyes from that intense, yet not unkind, stare. “We’re happy for you, we are, but we can’t live with the unpredictability anymore.” 

\--  
NEARLY FOUR MONTHS AGO

It was raining when The Hedgewitch moved in. It was towards the end of April, a time where it wasn’t unusual for the rain to last for weeks on end. It was a little odd, however; that while it was dry in the city and on the side of the town closest to the city, it was often still raining over the rest of the town. Drenching the fields, the cottage, and the forest.  
Odder than that was the woman who had appeared in the middle of the night. She never gave her name, and mostly kept to herself, but word got around. Pretty soon everyone knew who to go to for a way to sleep at night, the secret to cleaning bloodstains out of cotton, or for friendly advice with a cup of tea. They called her the Witch of the Hedge, or Hedgewitch.  
(Once, she may have even been called “The Ongoing Storm” by a townsperson fed up with the weather)

The clouds didn’t break until Rose Tyler showed up one day. It was the first week of May, and it’d been raining and flooding for almost three weeks.

Rose didn’t mind the rain. It was calming, in a way. She just didn’t like how the topsoil of the fields rose up, covering her riding boots with mud. She was already going to have to take them as a loss when she suddenly sucked in a breath. Her foot was freezing wet. She was standing. In a puddle. She was standing in a puddle. Well, one foot was in a puddle, just high enough for her to feel her stocking soak through inside her boot.

Why didn’t she pay enough attention to where she was going? “C’mon Rose,” she told herself. No time to waste if she wanted to get back home before anyone noticed her gone. She looked down at her ruined boots. Well, no chance of them not knowing she’d been out now. She thought vehemently to herself, _The Hedgewitch had better be bloody worth it_.

-

The cottage was cute, of course. Grey bricks and a thatch roof, a little garden that was only a little worse for wear. The gate in the hedge around the property was open, and smoke rose from the cottage chimney.

Rose took a breath and crossed the threshold, determination carrying her until she reached the rounded front door and brought her fist up. 1-2-3.. 1-2, she knocked quickly.

There was no answer. When Rose leaned her hand on the wood a little, it creaked inward and she stumbled to right herself.

“Hello?” she called into the room. A woman was stirring something in a pot above the fire, muttering to herself.

“Hello, are you the witch?” she called. The witch stood straight immediately, scraping her nose on the stones above the fireplace. It was almost comical. She turned around, and Rose couldn’t help but laugh.

“ _You’re the Hedgewitch_?” She laughed heartily. If she hadn’t been raised better, she’d be leaning forward with her hands around her middle, and guffawing. The Hedgewitch’s face was smeared with flour, a smudge of dirt on her forehead, and a slight pink tinge on the bridge of her nose from the scrape.

With anyone else, the Hedgewitch would have had the most indignant look upon her face. For her immediate reaction was to feel a little defensive and embarrassed. When she looked at Rose, instead, her reaction was of awe. She did her best to cover it up.

The witch began scrubbing at her face with her blouse’s sleeve. “There’s no need to be rude,” she said in an adorably defeated way. “So. Who are you then?” She din’t pause to let Rose answer. “Higher class, Lady, little ways from the city,” she surmised, eyes trailing from Rose’s muddied boots to the full skirt of her peony dress, to her slim face, and hair which was most certainly treated with lemon-juice to keep its blonde. “Those shoes are awful, take them off. I do like the dress though, you’re all pink an’ yellow in this grey province.”

Rose stood there and gaped. “I’m rude!” she cried. “Why you hypocritical..” but The Hedgewitch had already turned her back, grabbing pot holders from where they hung by the fireplace and lifting up the big black pot. She seemed stronger than Rose had expected. She was also, now that she’d scrubbed her face somewhat, marginally _handsome_. “Nope,” Rose sighed out of earshot, popping the “P”. The Hedgewitch was downright gorgeous. 

The witch drained out the pot over a shallow basin and almost preened when she found the various vegetation to her liking. The brew properly steeped. She almost forgot the beautiful woman in her residence. Almost. “Now Rose, would you like a cuppa?” She called over her shoulder. Rose nearly jumped, guilty as she backed away from the curiosities she’d been admiring on the witch’s shelves. The Hedgewitch continued. “Then we can discuss whatever it is that’s brought you all the way out here.”

“Sure,” Rose rushed out. “that sounds lovely.” In truth, Rose was caught up by her unwitting host’s energy, as they bounded around the room.

A ‘cuppa’ turned out to be tea of whatever concoction the witch had brewed, accompanied by plain toast with jam. “It’s a flowery green tea, supposed to help with jitters,” the witch confessed. “I make it for myself. I’m always on edge.”

Rose had no trouble believing that.

\--

PRESENT DAY

Rose ran up, and there was no gallantry in the way she huffed “stop!”  
Nor did anyone hear her, she was so winded from running all that way. Rose could keep up with the best of them (and The Hedgewitch) but her adrenaline rush to get there had just about crashed.

“Oh,” the Hedgewitch stated. Sheepish like a child caught with their thumb in a pie. “I suppose I’ve let myself become lax, could tighten up a boundary spell, rudimentary really, keep the repercussions to a smaller area and-”

“Oi!” hollered a lady from the crowd. She didn’t notice it was Rose. Rose was always cutting through The Hedgewitch’s witchy jargon to keep her on track.

The witch continued. “I mean,” and she found the dirt beneath her fingernails _very_ interesting, “I could try not to be a drama king, too.”

Rose rolled her eyes as she finally pushed out in front, glaring at the leader’s “watch it!” as she shoved him aside. Rose put her hands on her hips and drew in a breath.

“So what I’m gatherin’, is you lot want The Hedgewitch to stay content, yeah?”

The Hedgewitch’s surprised green eyes flew to Rose, and she smiled wide, beaming. Even as she wrung her hands out before wiping them on her pants.

“Well that’s my job, so I’ll fix it. Now shoo!” Rose turned and stared down every single person in the crowd. Two, and the leader, hesitated. “I’m not performing for an audience!” Rose added to them. They slunk away.

\--

EVENING IN THE COTTAGE

“Are you sure you can’t fix the mantel clock for me, if I bring it here?” Rose whined. The two women sat at the witch’s small table by the window. It was summer, so the sun still shone. They’d had pleasant weather for a few days.

Rose’s elbows were on the table, which was never allowed at home. She’d swapped her proper dress out for a plain smock and a pink shawl from The Hedgewitch, and hummed appreciatively as she sipped her lavender tea.

The witch looked at Rose like she couldn’t believe she was there. It was apparent when she spoke. “What did you mean earlier? You’ll ‘fix it’?” The witch prodded. Then, she might have even seemed angry at the prospect of being Rose’s project. Or a charity case. “I don’t need-”

But Rose cut her off, reaching her hand across the table to cover the witch’s right wrist in her grasp. “Neither of us is a ward, Hedgewitch. I just needed to get them out of here so I could propose to you.” Rose looked deep into the witch’s soul.

“Oh,” The Hedgewitch agreed. Then, “What? What?! Wait!” There she was, finally caught up. Rose smirked.  
“Yes.” The Hedgewitch cried. “I mean, no. I mean, I can’t stay.” On that last point she was very stubborn. 

Rose patted her hand before retrieving her own arm and taking another sip of tea. “I didn’t mean we’d have to stay here. You’ll find your missing caravan, and then we’ll travel the country together. Across the world and back for Christmas! 'Least that's what you always say, yeah?.” She whispered in a conspiratorial tone.

The Hedgewitch’s smile returned slowly as she understood. “I dare say you’ll get tired of me,” she whispered back. Picking up her own neglected cup of tea.

“Nah,” Rose’s eyes flashed. “I don’t think I ever will.”

\--

EPILOGUE

They wound up being an entire week late to Christmas with Rose’s parents. It all worked out anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> So I got this idea the other night and I ran with it. For three nights I've been throwing things that don't make sense into this short story, and I don't hate it. I might even edit it some day.
> 
> I'd like to write some more in-depth one shot scenes about Rose's visits between their first meeting and the end of this story as well. Maybe. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed! Maybe I'll write more Thirteen stories once her season's started and I have a better feel for her as the Doctor, too.
> 
> Please let me know how I did in the comments!


End file.
